Michael De Santa

Michael De Santa (1965-), born Michael Townley, was an American career criminal who was involved in a series of heists and robberies from 1988 to 2013. He faked his death and changed his name after the failed 2004 Bismarck bank robbery, and he retired to a Beverly Hills mansion with his family. Family troubles led to De Santa returning to a criminal career in 2013, and he would carry out several heists, be forced to work for the FBI against the CIA, reunite with his former partner Trevor Philips to recreate an uneasy alliance, and work for businessmen such as Solomon Richards and Devin Weston. In the end, he tied up loose ends by teaming up with his friends Trevor and Franklin Clinton to kill FBI agent Steve Haines and the billionaire Weston, allowing for them to go their separate ways with large sums of money in their bank accounts.

Biography
Michael Townley was born in the Midwestern United States in 1965, and he grew up in a trailer park with his poor family. His alcoholic father abandoned him and his mother when he was young, and De Santa grew up with temperament issues. He became an acclaimed quarterback for an all-state football team, but a string of injuries and his anger issues later caused him to quit. By the time he was twenty, he had been in prison twice, and he committed his first robbery in 1988 in the outskirts of Camden, New Jersey. Townley associated himself with Lester Crest, who planned out several robberies, and he became a partner and friend of Trevor Philips in 1993 while escorting cargo across the border.

Townley eventually met a stripper named Amanda and started a relationship with her, buying her breast implants and starting his own prostitution racket. After a few months of dating, Amanda gave birth to Michael's children Michael and Tracey at the trailer park where Townley lived, and they got married a few months later. Townley began to care about his family and "went soft", and he began making plans for retirement. In 2004, he decided to set up his own heist crew with help from the FBI, which would give him a new start in California and a five-figure salary each month if he cut his ties to his heist partners. In the 2004 Bismarck bank robbery, Townley faked his own death, but the FBI failed to kill Philips, instead killing fellow heist crew member Brad Snider. Dave Norton became a hero for supposedly killing Townley, but Norton instead helped Townley to move into a Beverly Hills mansion in California with his family, and Townley's name was changed to "Michael De Santa". De Santa would spend the next ten years in retirement, raising his family with a life of luxury while watching television, drinking whiskey, smoking cigars, overeating, and laying by the poolside, sadly reminiscing about past glories and movies. His spoiled children caused trouble, as did his cheating wife, who had affairs with her yoga instructor, her tennis coach, the gardener, and several other people.

In 2013, De Santa was dragged back into a life of crime when he destroyed the Premium Deluxe Motorsport vehicle dealership by forcing the dealership's repossession man Franklin Clinton to drive his son's SUV through its window, retaliating against dealership owner Simon Yetarian's fradulent activities and Clinton's invasion of De Santa's home. De Santa sarcastically invited Clinton to have a drink with him sometime, but Clinton later showed up at his home to drink with him. That same afternoon, Jimmy De Santa called Michael and told him that he was on De Santa's yacht, which was being stolen by Marabunta Grande gangsters after he failed in his attempt to sell it to them behind his father's back. An angry De Santa took Clinton along with him in a failed attempt to recover his yacht, but he succeeded in rescuing his troublesome son, who he berated for his stupidity. De Santa and Clinton would later pull down a mansion in the Hollywood Hills after his wife's tennis coach hid there from him after De Santa caught him having sex with his wife; the mansion turned out to be Martin Madrazo's mansion, and Madrazo sent hitmen to kill De Santa and Clinton at De Santa's mansion. Madrazo then arrived at the mansion and beat Michael, telling him that he owed them for the damage done to the mansion. De Santa agreed to come up with the money needed for the repairs, and he was forced to make contact with his old friend Lester Crest to plan a robbery. In exchange for De Santa's murder of social media CEO Jay Norris, Crest helped De Santa with planning the robbery of the Vangelico jewelry store, and De Santa recruited a heist crew, including Clinton. They successfully robbed the store, using tear gas to help them, and they made off with small profits, using a large portion of the money to pay for Madrazo's repairs. From then on, De Santa was out of retirement.

The robbery of the Vangelico store led to Philips realizing that Townley was still alive in Los Angeles, and Dave Norton warned De Santa that Philips would find out about De Santa's deceit after De Santa uttered an outdated movie line to a man during the robbery, one of Townley's old trademarks. De Santa would be forced to return to working with Philips, and the FBI later entrapped De Santa, Philips, and Clinton into working for them in exchange for the FBI not having them killed. They were ordered to perform a variety of tasks, such as capturing terror suspect Ferdinand Kerimov, killing Tahir Javan, robbing an armored car, robbing the Paleto Bay bank, attacking a research facility in the countryside, and bombing the FBI building. They made some profits from their jobs, but they were mostly working to prevent corrupt FBI agent Steve Haines from exposing Norton's relationship with De Santa and from having the rest of them taken down. De Santa and Clinton formed a father-son relationship, while friction increased between Philips and De Santa over De Santa's lying to Philips about his death, culimating in a plane chase to Bismarck that led to Philips discovering Snider's death and De Santa being captured by Philips' Wei Cheng Triad enemies. Clinton rescued De Santa from the Triads at a meatpacking factory, and the trio eventually made up in order to carry out one final heist, the Union Depository heist. They put aside their differences to perform a lucrative final job, taking tens of millions of dollars in gold bricks from the depository. They then teamed up to tie up loose ends, killing Haines, his billionaire ally Devin Weston, and their other enemies. After this, the criminals decided to remain friends, but they dissolved their criminal partnership. They returned to their normal lives, investing in businesses and retiring.

That year, De Santa was also able to repair his relationship with his family, convincing them to move back to the mansion after they briefly moved into a motel. De Santa defended them from Merryweather mercenaries sent to their home by Weston, and they resumed living a luxurious life at their beautiful home. De Santa was also credited as an executive producer in the Solomon Richards movie "Meltdown" after assisting him with bringing the actors and director in line, beating (and later killing) the mobster-turned-talent scout Rocco Pelosi, and retrieving the original footage from the film from Devin Weston's secretary Molly Schultz. De Santa retired as a legitimate businessman, although he occasionally engaged in criminal activity.